Impending Crisis: 7 Useful Ways To Respond.

In the Jan-Feb 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review there's a great article by Joshua D. Margolis and Paul G. Stoltz about "How to Bounce Back From Adversity." The article is several pages long and loaded with great info, but my quick takeaway for nonprofits and NGOs is a list of several useful questions that will enable leaders to "counter adversity with resilience." Instead of becoming paralyzed by crisis, instead engage by using the questions below as starting points to catalyze action:

1. What can we do now to change or influence the course of this crisis?
2. Who can help us and what's the best way to engage those who can?
3. How can we effectively mobilize others to help us navigate through this?
4. Are there specific, immediate actions that we can take to reduce the potential downside of this crisis and maximize the opportunity that comes from it?
5. What do we want our organization to look like on the other side of this crisis and what can we do now to shape that outcome?
6. What concrete steps and action plans can we develop and adopt that will keep us moving forward as a team with a shared agenda?
7. How can we effectively communicate our plans to our key constituents and to the community-at-large?

Regardless of how we answer each of these questions, Margolis and Stoltz make it clear to us that resilient leaders use these and similar questions for rapid analysis, and then move quickly to a plan of action.

Read a summary of the article here (full article available by subscription only).